Naperville parking counters to go live Tuesday morning

Driving to lunch in downtown Naperville?

Effective Tuesday afternoon, you're likely to spend more time at the table and less time looking for a place to park.

Mayor George Pradel will flip the switch at 11 a.m. on the city's new parking guidance systems for two downtown parking decks.

The system, located at the Van Buren deck and Central Parking Facility at Washington Street and Chicago Avenue, will monitor the number of vehicles entering and exiting the parking structures.

The number of available spaces in each structure will be posted at the parking deck entrances. The Van Buren deck has 792 spaces and the Central facility has 553.

"These signs are intended to give advance information to people about how full the deck is so they can make an educated decision before they enter the deck as to the availability of parking," project engineer Andy Hynes said. "Hopefully that will translate into better use of our decks, less circulation in the downtown, less emissions and people being a little more satisfied when they come to downtown."

The system also includes an Internet interface that eventually will allow visitors to check parking availability online before they head downtown.

"That technology has been developed and we're just working on the final connections between the system itself and our website so it may or not be up (Tuesday)," Hynes said. "But it will be live within the next few days."

Hynes said the system has been tested during the last few days and has been found to only have a 3 percent to 5 percent margin of error.

"The counts were pretty close so they're pretty accurate," he said.

Roughly half of the $300,000 total cost of the systems is being paid with grant money.

That money is part of nearly $1.4 million the city is receiving from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009. The grants are to be used to reduce fossil fuel emissions and overall energy use as well as making transportation or building improvements that will conserve energy.

According to city officials, motorists often search for spots in various surface parking lots instead of using one of the two main parking facilities due to the uncertainty of the availability of spaces within the structures.